Tag: gps tracking chip

I think we’ve all been there before. You have this vehicle that you just wish that you could track. You might be a business owner, or a concerned parent, or a victim of grand theft auto. It doesn’t matter. Whatever your reasoning, GPS vehicle tracking is something that is accessible to individuals at all levels of technological familiarity. Anyone can track a vehicle if they are equipped with a little understanding and the right hardware for the job.

What we hope to do here with this post is give anyone all the knowledge they need use a GPS tracking system for their vehicle. We will go step by step through the whole process and by the end any person should be able to understand what this powerful technology allows them to accomplish as well as some steps for them to take to get their car, van, or truck tracked with GPS.

What Is GPS Vehicle Tracking?

Its always good to start at the very beginning. I hear its a very good place to start. When we begin, we start with GPS. This acronym stands for the Global Positioning System. It is a constellation (fancy word for group) of satellites operated by the United States Air Force. These satellites float around in outer space beaming a special signal down to earth. These signals are used by a whole bunch of devices and can be heard using a special receiver, or chip.

This GPS tracking chip will “hear” the signal and learn several different things from it. The most important things that it is going to learn is the satellite that sent the signal and how long ago it sent the signal. The GPS chip will then do some fancy math and determine where on earth it could be in relation to that one satellite.

Now I want you to imagine that you are a man floating out in space looking down on the earth. You have the black expanse of space ominously looming behind you as you gaze at that beautiful blue ball that we call home. Looking down (you have super eyesight) you notice some interesting things about points on the earth in relation to yourself. First, there is one point just below that is the closest point on the earth to you. The second thing is that all the points that are not right below you have other points that share their distance with that point. All the points that share the same distance from you can be connected together and they will make an “o” (circle) shape on the ground. Having more than one point as the distance from you is the norm when looking down on the earth from space.

Now back to our GPS vehicle tracking – specifically our understanding of how many satellites are needed for a tracking chip to know where it is in the world. Just one satellite message is probably not going to give you your exact location. Unless you are directly under a satellite (only around 32 points on earth exists just like this) your GPS chip is going to need to get some help from other satellites to determine where it is. The magic number is 4 total satellites are needed to get a really solid position.

What has been described above is the standard way all GPS devices work. They all require access to the signals from these satellites to figure out its position. If it cannot get these signals (i.e. it is in a cave, an underground parking structure, at the bottom of a lake, river, or ocean, or it is being jammed by a GPS blocker) then it will not be able to be tracked. This is important for those thinking about how they want to use their vehicle tracking device.

The next thing that we should understand about any tracking system is that is needs a way to communicate the location information that the tracking chip calculates to you, the person who is using the vehicle tracker. This is something that standard GPS devices simply do not do. For example, you cannot take your standard GPS navigation device, say a Garmin nüvi 265WT, stick it in a car, and expect to be able to track it. It just doesn’t work that way because these devices have no way to communicate information to people outside the vehicle they are in.

Instead, you are going to need a device that is specifically made for tracking purposes. Car tracking devices generally have both a GPS chip built into it as well as some sort of communication hardware. In most cases this is going to be a cell phone modem for communication over the wireless networks that paint themselves across America, but there are a few instances where the tracker could communicate via commercial communication satellites. Chances are though any tracker you are going to use will use a cell phone network, so we will focus on how that works.

Your vehicle tracking system will now take the information that the tracking chip has calculated and send this out over the cell phone network much like a person would send a text message (SMS) or email. This data is sent from the device to the tracking provider. The tracking provider will make this information available to their users – in this case you and whomever you decide to share it with – through a clean web interface that will either be Google Maps or at least closely resemble it.

That, in a nutshell, is what GPS vehicle tracking is – it is the seamless combination of GPS location technology and wireless communication technology into one powerful device.

GPS Vehicle Tracking Devices

There are many different devices out there from a wide range of manufacturers and distributors. We cannot go through each of them and talk about the different vehicle tracking devices that they offer and how you can use them. That would take up too much time and would probably be pretty boring to read. Instead, what we want to do here is briefly describe the two main categories of devices and discuss some of the various pros and cons for each of them. The two types of GPS vehicle trackers out there are built-in device and standalone device.

Built-in GPS Vehicle Tracking Devices

These are the most commonly used devices for fleet vehicle tracking. Being built in to the vehicle gives them extreme flexibility and power, enabling almost constant tracking for vital performance metrics for businesses. Also, by being well tied into the internal workings of the vehicle also has its advantages. For example, some GPS vehicle trackers allow remote control of certain functions of the car.

Is your driver idling the car for too long at a service call? Simply cut his engine for him! Did your delivery person accidentally lock the keys in the ignition of the delivery van? Unlock the doors remotely for her! You can many of these things with fleet tracking devices built specifically for the purpose. And these features are not just limited to commercial applications, many consumer oriented trackers also offer these feature to their customers as well.

Most built in trackers do require a professional install since theses devices do become integral part of the vehicles electrical and computer systems. Some trackers just plug into a special port under the steering wheel (called an OBD-II port) and don’t require any special attention from a professional installer, which means that you can install it yourself once you get the piece of equipment in the mail.

I did want to clear up on point of possible confusion before going on to talk about standalone trackers. By using the phrasse “built-in” I might have given the wrong impression. I do not necessarily mean something like OnStar. It does not have to be built into the car when it is made or even shortly after it is made. It just needs to get its power from the vehicle. Another phrase I could have used was hard-wired.

Other possible applications:

Teen driver tracking

Theft recovery

Catching a cheater

Business mileage calculator

Standalone GPS Vehicle Tracking Devices

Standalone trackers are usually versatile GPS tracking devices that are not necessarily bound to a single function. Take the Zoombak line of products. There are two main trackers that they sell. The Advanced GPS Car & Family Locator and the Advanced GPS Universal Locator. These devices are essentially the same, the only difference being the branding that they’ve done. This is pretty much going to be the standard for all portable, standalone trackers.

One thing that you have to be aware of is that standalone trackers cannot really compete with the built-in vehicle tracking systems because they are not set up for real time GPS tracking in the same way. While a built in tracker can produce an avalanche of data and never run out of batteries a standalone tracker can only track as long as the battery has a charge. The Zoombak can give 150 locates before it runs out of battery. This is a pitiful number when compared with fleet tracking devices.

But what they lack in longevity these devices make up in versatility. A built in car tracker isn’t going to be much good once you take it out of the car. In fact, you can’t really take it out of the car to be used on your teenage daughter as she goes through Central Park. Devices like the Zoombak provide comprehensive tracking support for most personal tracking needs.

Another feature of the portable trackers is that they are often easily concealable. If you are trying to track a vehicle incognito then something small is definitely going to be what you want to go with. While it still isn’t the very best money can buy for this type of application, you will still get a lot of bang for you buck.

Other possible applications:

Most non-vehicle GPS tracking functions, including:

Sport tracking

Pet tracking

Child tracking

Covert tracking of cars

The Cell Phone As Vehicle Tracker

A word here needs to be said about the ubiquitous cell phone. Did you know that these devices are the most common GPS trackers on the planet? They can easily be utilized to become full fledged vehicle trackers. Even if you don’t have a cell phone to spare you can install some sweet (and free) cell phone tracking software for your phone. If you are looking for a good program for your phone then you should check our list: free GPS cell phone trackers.

Do I Need A Vehicle Tracking System?

Now that you have gotten a little bit more information about the devices that are going to make up your vehicle tracking system you have a decision to make. Is GPS vehicle tracking something that you actually need? The costs associated with this type of real time tracking is certainly not cheap. The cheaper devices start at around $100 and they only go up from there. Then there is the monthly subscription fee that all tracking providers require to operate correctly. In the first year alone you can reasonably expect to spend around $500.

Businesses obviously have the most to gain by implementing these devices as part of a fleet management system. Private individuals may save some money on insurance premiums by having a tracker, but the real offset is the value that you receive from having one of these devices. Is it enough to justify purchasing a vehicle tracker?

The other day, we looked at all the bad that government GPS tracking implants could bring about if it were adopted by a government and used with ill intent. But that is not the only side to the implantable GPS debate – there is also much good that these devices can do. Today, let us consider just what good could come about.

We have already clearly established that implanted GPS tracking can be extremely evil if used will ill intent, but we have spent no time discussing all the good that can come of having a world where implantable GPS tracking is possible. The amount of good might still not compare to the amount of evil, but it is still at least worth our consideration. If we find that the amount of good exceed the amount of evil that can be done then we should at least consider developing this type of technology.

Some of the more interesting and useful applications of this type of tracking include:

1. Catching Criminals

One of the main functions of governments is to maintain justice and to see the that the wicked are punished for their crimes. As things stand, there is a lot that can help criminals escape prosecution – but probably the most important element that prosecutors need to do is to link a criminal to the scene of the crime. We have made great strides at this as a civilization through the discovery of finger printing and DNA evidence, but we have not filled up all the holes in our judicial system yet. If we could leverage a nation wide GPS tracking system that involves implanted GPS we would have a nearly flawless crime analysis tool on our hands.

The first step would be being able to track down suspects that could have potentially been involved in a crime. Any murder of theft is bound to leave a GPS trail for the police to follow. If the murder was a close range shooting or stabbing then all the police would need to do is pull up all the people who where at such and such location around such and such a time. They then could evaluate each person to see if they are likely to be a suspect.

Once they have determined some potential suspects they would just have to get the real time position of the suspect using the GPS tracking device implanted in their body. Tracking them down would then be as easy as driving to their location. No costly stake outs. No mistaken identities.

Even though the cost of the system as a whole would be very great, the cost saving for the police would be pretty significant. The amount of time that it would take to identify suspects, locate them, and bring them in for questioning could all be taken care of relatively quickly, saving thousands of man hours and millions of dollars.

The number of crimes are not limited to theft and murder. Essentially any crime that involves a location could be tracked using this type of system. Speeding, illegal dumping, stalking, rape, kidnapping, abduction, abuse, and a whole host of other crimes could be handled in a much more precise and useful manner with the administration of a little GPS technology.

2. Improving Emergency Responses

Another huge benefit would be the improved nature of emergency response personnel. Imagine a 911 call coming in from a small child, named Tim. It is coming from 401 North Cumberland Lane and Tim has indicated that his mommy is laying on the floor and won’t get up and that there is a lot of smoke in the house. Immediately, fire fighters and paramedics can be dispatched to the scene. As they go their computers light up with information that there are 2 people in at the house. They get a Google Map-like satellite image of the house with small indicators as to the GPS location of each of the people inside. They also get an elevation reading that lets them know if the people are in a downstairs or upstairs area of the home.

Armed with this information they arrive on the scene and are able to quickly enter the home and target the areas where the GPS indicated there were people in house. A rescue is quickly achieved and the fire fighting begins in earnest. If there was no GPS tracking implant in each of the residents the fire fighters would have to have done a thorough room by room search to make sure that there was no one else in the home – putting them at risk and increasing the amount of time that it might take to put ou the fire.

Medical emergencies would also be much easier to respond to if the paramedics had the GPS coordinates of the patient. This is especially true when the patient is in a remote area or where there are a lot of people that might impair the paramedics vision. Also, in transit to the patient the paramedics would have laser like instructions on how to get there and would not loose any time to wrong directions.

3. Improving Military Operations

In a military setting, troops would always know where friends are at all times and could avoid the costly and demoralizing “friendly fire” that has plagued soldiers in all modern wars. While making use of the implantable tracking devices would require an integration of personal combat computers for each and every soldier, it is not unreasonable to assume that by the time we develop the technology to implant GPS devices in our bodies we will also have the ability to give each soldier their own combat computer.

This could translate the GPS data into helpful instructions that would give each soldier the ability to make lightning quick choices about whether their target is a friend or a foe in the most tense of situations. It would also allow military commander to know exactly where their soldiers are at any given moment. Captured soldiers could also be easily tracked, revealing the source of enemy prisons and detention centers. Rescue attempts would be much easier to pull off and no men would ever be left behind.

4. Assist In Urban Planning

One of the key benefits of universal GPS tracking implants that are monitored and use by the government is that it would allow them to do a lot of civic planning and development. They could analyze population densities and come up with plans to aid in the flow of individuals for work and for leisure. An example of this might be a growing suburb of a massive metropolitan area. After some analysis of the GPS data they find that the majority of people in this area use a major highway in order to head south into the city for work and for play. They also realize that the other suburbs north also do the same thing, so there is a massive flight from the suburbs out into the city. This causes a lot of traffic congestion and leads to a lot of pollution and stress.

The government could then step in and do one of a variety of things to solve the problem. They could try and entice some business to relocate to a friendlier location for their employees. A move north along the highway corridor would help reduce the overall south bound traffic and ease some of the congestion. The government could increase the size of the highway corridor to improve speeds and accommodate more commuters. They could improve the public transportation system to encourage more commuters to make use of this environmentally friendly, cheap, and efficient mode of transportation.

Information like this could also be used to make development decisions. If a particular region does not have the infrastructure to move ahead with a planned development project than the government can step in and intervene. This will have a limiting affect on some types of growth, but overall I think that it would make cities better run, safer, and more “citizen friendly.”

Finally, governments could make better use of their land if they could know how it was being used by citizens. If a park never was used or a library never frequented then governments could make the tough decisions to close these centers or to re-purpose them for a more efficient use. In the end, I think that this would end up saving tax payers a lot of money and would make the government provide the services that the citizens need and want.

5. Increase Business and Governmental Accountability

Another important benefit of a nation-wide GPS tracking implant system is the increased accountability of business and government organizations. For example, a government inspector is supposed to go around and inspect elevators on all the building in New York City. Right now, there is very little accountability to make sure that they do that other than the people taking them at their word that such and such was done. Another example might be a police officer who is tasked with patroling a particularly dangerous part of town, how are we to know he has been faithful to his duty and not just parked at a donut shop all evening?

If you introduce a GPS tracking system to the equation you come to see that there is little that these employees and government agencies can hide from the public (if the information is made publically available, which it would be under the Freedom of Information act). They are held accountable for their actions.

Private corporations would be the same. Imagine that some nasty industrial waste begins to show up in a natural preserve somewhere in the West. How will the dumping party be held responsible? Just go to the GPS tracking log and check out all the people that have gone to that area and find out what their speed was as they traveled there to tell who drove a car, who walked, etc. Once you have that list you can interview each individual if there is more than one suspect or you could cross reference names on this list with others from a company payroll. Either way, you will find out who did the dumping and the person they dumped for in no time at all.

How Will Our Future Look?

I don’t know about you, but I think that the future of GPS tracking implants is a little in the dark. While this list of benefits is useful and good for society at large I just don’t think that it currently outweights the gross injustices that a government could perpetrate with this type of tracking system in place. Citizens would have no privacy and absolutely no expectation that they would have any. I could imagine a whole subclass of people that spurn the trackers and that are forced to live underground or in remote regions of the country in an attempt to evade the all seeing eyes of the government.

But this does not mean that all GPS implants should be avoided. There might be a strong argument for personal GPS tracking implants, but perhaps we will visit that topic another day.

One of the most feared and most useful futures of GPS tracking technology is almost certainly implantable GPS tracking chips. We have all seen the bleak futures where citizens are under the constant supervision of some totalitarian government whose sole purpose seems to be to torment them. It is a well established film genre that has deep roots in the cold war psyche of the Western world. The world of Orwells’ 1984 would have been twice as bad if they could have had a GPS chip in each of the citizens in this dystopia. One thing is clear, given just a few moments of reflection almost anyone can think of the mountains of evil that such a system could potentially generate.

But what about all the good that this system could accomplish, do we ever think about that? We have been trained by our culture to overlook the potentially massive benefits that would also accompany such a system because of the possibility of abuse. As a result, our fears could be causing us to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Is the development of GPS tracking implants something that we should consider doing? Do the potential dangers out weight the potential benefits?

The Evil of GPS Tracking Implants

The number of evils that could be accomplished with this type of information is obvious and extensive. I would generally think of classifying the issues in terms of two main ways of abusing the information gathered from such a system: (1) dispatching of government opponents, and (2) using private information for profit.

1. Dispatching of Government Opponents

One of the most insidious methods that a government could use a universal GPS tracking system would be to kill their citizens that opposed their regime. Since they would know the exact location of everyone of their citizens it would be simple enough for them to dispatch a death squad that would easily be able to locate anyone anywhere. The only “safe” place for such dissidents would be underground somewhere where neither GPS nor cell phone signals could possibly find them. This would mean that even if the government did not kill someone, they would effectively remove them from being a threat by forcing them to spend their whole life underground.

A little less insidious but just as dangerous would be the threat of constant arrest. If you were to voice some concern about the government they could find all sorts of ways to get you into jail by using the information gather from your implanted GPS tracking chip. They might arrest you outright, picking you up on the street as you make your way to the supermarket to buy some milk. They might even rig a trial to get you arrested for a crime you didn’t commit. All they would need is to have you at the scene of some crime – like a murder – and use the GPS location information to tie them to the crime.

A third way that government might be able to use GPS tracking information to hurt their citizens is by making public information about their personal, private activities. If an opponent frequents a church, or goes to a psychologist, or has met with the same woman who is not his wife for the past year and a half at a hotel the government could make this information known by leaking it to close friends, relatives, or the media. Also, their ability to identify and exploit known vices would increase dramatically if they had a repository of all know position data on a individual.

These are just a few of the ways that governments equipped with widespread, cheap GPS tracking implants could use the information to hurt their opponents. There are more, but for now let us turn our attention to another form of government evil, profiting from its citizens.

2. Using Private Information For Profit

In this case of government abuse the basic sin that the government would be committing is making public private information about their citizens. They could do this in any number of ways, but I think mentioning three would suffice to give us a feel for the wickedness that they could do.

The first is that they could sell GPS tracking information to corporations to “improve” advertising targeting. This was the impetus behind the Palm Pre cell phone tracking software debacle and is a desire that I don’t think is going to go away anytime soon. Just imagine how much money they could make if they could sell data to every single corporation in the world. They could tell car companies who likes to drive fast while in the highways, who generally travels with more than one person in the car, where they go when the travel, and how often they travel. If the government could then correlate this data with tax returns then companies would have a picture of their potential customers that would enable them to provide laser targeted advertising.

This ability would be even greater if companies could also get live position data on particular individuals that they have targeted for adverting campaigns. They could feed you ads with the aid of real time GPS tracking. Imagine this for a second: You are driving down a lonely stretch of highway when you come upon a billboard. On it is the following message:

Bill, you have driving your 2074 Ford Apocalypse 209,987 miles since your last oil change – don’t you think its time to get one?

Satan’s Auto Store is off of exit 22 and charges $0.03 for an oil change when you mention this billboard!

Now that is laser targeted advertising, and it is really creepy!

Similarly, companies could also use this type of information to identify potential markets and products. If a coffee company called Starmonies wants to identify a new set of real estate for to put up a store they can analyze foot traffic in downtown Los Angelos to help identify the point where the most coffee drinkers walk during peek coffee consuming hours. Or a company might take advantage of GPS tracking data to find out if they can market a certain service in an area. Either way, the government is going to profiting for your private information.

The third way that the government could use GPS information would be to manipulate the population for means of perpetuating government. One very common method of population manipulation that already goes on is the redrawing of district boundaries for elections. This would become even easier as the data would be much better than census data and could potentially be correlated to voting information (hey, it could happen), tax returns, and criminal records. In the end, no congressman or senator would ever get kicked out of office because they could always just redraw the boundary until they have a plurality of votes.

Now That Is Wicked!

There is no doubt that a lot of evil could be done with GPS tracking devices that are implanted inside each and every citizen in a country. The government and private corporations would have access to insane amounts of information about people that would would make the whole system scary if it were to be misused and abused. Dissidents, opponents, and even society’s unwanted stand to suffer countless crimes against humanity if the whims of public opinion or political power were to turn against them.

Any scientist who would develop such a system should take warning. Human nature is deceitfully wicked and without some serious checks in place there is no telling what type of authoritarian regime would be created when GPS tracking becomes this extensive. It is worth development if such terrible things could be done?

Next we will turn out attentio to the good GPS tracking implants could do, but until then, just sit and ponder the inexplicable wickedness of man!